Thursday, October 3, 2013

You’ve probably heard about or seen some of the details from
Wednesday’s deadly crash involving a church bus, an SUV and a tractor-trailer
on Interstate 40 near Dandridge, Tenn., 30 miles east of Knoxville near the
North Carolina border. The crash has killed at least eight people and injured
14. Two of the injured remain in critical condition.

Normally, when an accident of this magnitude occurs, a team
from the National Transportation Safety Board is dispatched to investigate the
cause of the accident and to make safety recommendations to ensure such
tragedies are avoided in the future.

Although the agency has no authority to regulate, fund or be
directly involved in the operation of any mode of transportation, it is set up
by design to provide independent oversight and an objective viewpoint of the
transportation industry.

But because Congress remains gridlocked in Day Three of a
government shutdown that has furloughed some 800,000 government workers, and
left many “essential” government employees working without pay, there are no
investigators to send to Tennessee.

“In this particular case I think it’s highly likely that we
would have responded to it, but again, with our investigators furloughed, it’s
impossible to do that,” Sharon Bryson, deputy director of communications for
the NTSB, said in a news story posted on an NBC
News website.

“All of our highway investigators are furloughed,” Bryson is
quoted as saying in the same article.

Bryson actually responded via email to my request for comment.
She said the NTSB media team is currently on furlough due to the funding lapse
and would not be able to provide comment to the media.

So there’s that.

Here’s what we know so far. The left front tire of the bus
blew out, causing it to veer across the eastbound lanes of I-40 and into the
westbound lanes. The bus struck an SUV before colliding with an oncoming semi,
which burst into flames on impact. Six people on the bus were killed, as was
one of the three people in the SUV, and the tractor-trailer driver.

Authorities are still trying to determine the identities of
the victims, some of whom will have to be identified by dental records.

The Tennessee Highway Patrol is handling the accident
investigation. A spokesman for the state patrol declined to comment about how
the lack of NTSB involvement would affect their investigation.

“Our search team is very good at what they do. They
investigate every accident on our Tennessee highways,” spokesman Kevin Crawford
said in a phone interview with me on Thursday. “Any comment about that would
have to be directed to the NTSB.”

To be clear, I am in no way saying, suggesting or otherwise
insinuating that the Tennessee Highway Patrol is not up to the difficult task
of finding out just what exactly happened here. What I am concerned about, and
what should frankly concern us all, are the continued ripples from this
shutdown. Ripples that are interfering with the function and operation of
programs and agencies that are in place to help ensure our safety.

The most important part of the NTSB’s safety board’s mandate
is the safety recommendations it issues, many of which can be implemented well
before the formal investigation is concluded. On the NTSB’s own website, it
cites the investigation into the 1996 crash of TWA Flight 800, when the board
issued an urgent safety recommendation aimed at eliminating explosive fuel and
air vapors in airliner fuel tanks. That recommendation and at least 10 others –
three in 1996, one in 1997, and six in 1998 – came out before the formal
investigation concluded in 2000.

The state patrol can certainly get to the bottom of the
investigation, but it does not have the same ability that the NTSB does, to act
quickly in making safety recommendations that can and do save lives on a national
level.

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